1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a performance apparatus and an electronic musical instrument, which generate musical tones, when held and swung by a player with his or her hand.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic musical instrument has been proposed, which is provided with an elongated member of a stick type with a sensor installed thereon, and generates musical tones when the sensor detects a movement of the elongated member. Particularly, in the electronic musical instrument, the elongated member of a stick type has a shape of a drumstick and is constructed so as to generate musical tones as if percussion instruments generate sounds in response to player's motion of striking drums and/or Japanese drums.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,480 discloses a performance apparatus, which has an acceleration sensor installed in its stick-type member, and generates a musical tone when a certain period of time has lapsed after an output (acceleration sensor value) from the acceleration sensor reaches a predetermined threshold value.
But in the performance apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,480, generation of musical tones is simply controlled based on the acceleration sensor values of the stick-type member and therefore, the performance apparatus has a drawback that it is not easy for a player to change musical tones as he or she desires.
Further, Japanese Patent No. 2007-256736 A discloses an apparatus, which is capable of generating musical tones having plural tone colors. The apparatus is provided with a geomagnetic sensor and detects an orientation of a stick-type member held by the player based on a sensor value obtained by the geomagnetic sensor. The apparatus selects one from among plural tone colors of a musical tone to be generated, based on the detected orientation of the stick-type member. In the apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2007-256736A, since the tone color of musical tone is changed based on the direction in which the stick-type member is swung by the player, it is required to assign various directions in which the stick-type member is to be swung to generate various tone colors of musical tones. In the apparatus, as tone colors of musical tones to be generated increase, an angle range in which the stick-type member is swung to generate such tone color become narrower, and therefore it is hard to generate musical tones of a tone color desired by the player.